[Page
1] As a single tree with its
endlessly diverse parts, root and trunk and branch and leaf, core and layer
and fibre and bark, grows up out of a single simple-looking seed, and grows
up by successive small steps; even so has everything in the world which
can be at all looked upon as a system, a unified aggregate, an organism,
a diversity dominated by a unity, grown up by infinitesimal successive
steps out of a nebulous plasm by continual differentiation and integration.
Such is the evolution theory, which has been gradually coming more and
more to the front amongst thinkers since the middle of the nineteenth century
, and which has transformed science and literature in the modern West as
completely as a turn of the kaleidoscope transforms the arrangement of
the [Page
2] colored pieces of glass
andproduces an entirely new figure. Star-systems,
solar systems, planets; the mineral, the vegetable, the animal and the human
kingdoms existing on one of these planets, i.e., our earth; the
individual organisms composing these kingdoms, the individual mind of
the animal and the human, and finally, the groupings of men in societies,
and in the domestic, ecclesiastical, political, professional, industrial
and other institutions which constitute the organs of the social whole — are
all seen to have gradually and slowly developed out of small beginnings.
Extremely valuable work has been done along these lines, most admirable
collections of facts made, luminous inductions generalized out of them, the
law of analogy justified more and more, and the growth of all and each
seen to be as the growth of one.
2. ITS INCOMPLETENESS
But
obviously something more — perhaps the most important thing —
remains to be done. What is the good of building up the finest palace if no
one can be found to live in it ? The material coefficient has been prepared
with much labor; the spiritual coefficient has to be joined to it. To know that
the growth of all is as the growth of one is not enough. It is only the
beginning, the preparation, the [Page
3] pioneer work, the strong and
indispensable foundation, if we would have it so, for the further and
complete knowing that all lives are the One Life,
then for the feeling of that
common life running through all, and finally for the deliberate
living of such
a common life; the realization in thought has to be followed up
by the realization in emotion and then in conduct, of the solidarity, first
of the human race, and then of all living beings whatsoever; and as it
is rapidly becoming clear that all matter is living, that there is no dead
matter, “all
living beings†will soon be seen to mean the whole universe.
3. THE SUPPLEMENT REQUIRED
For this auspicious
completion of the labour, a further step has to be taken. As the textbooks
of science stand today, revised in the light of this great theory, they
are descriptions of the how of things, they are not explanations
of the why of the process; they set forth the effects, they do
not really touch causes. The why is the purpose, the end and
aim, the final cause, as
rightly named by Plato; and the how is the subservient means. The one
is Spiritual; the other Material. Evolution, professing to explain everything
else, does not explain itself. That which explains evolution, why it
takes place, is the Owner of the palace and the gardens, Who indeed has
planned and built and evolved and developed them [Page
4] and spread them
out for His own satisfaction, without Whom they are empty and desolate
indeed.
When the further step is taken by the workers in the field of evolutionary
research, of extending the Law of Analogy, which they now confine mostly
to the growth of organisms (at least so far as the larger organic wholes are
concerned), to the birth, decay and death, and the rebirth or reproduction
of these also; and when we carefully study the why of the world-process as
a whole, then will the spiritual counterpart of the material appearance be
found.
Only when the embryo
has attained a certain minimum maturity of form within the womb, does viability descend
upon it. Only when the body, the material sheathing of the human being, has
arrived at a certain stage of development, does self-consciousness appear
in him. Only when he has arrived at a certain further stage can the “All-Self-Consciousness” manifest within and inspire him. In Theosophical language, as the lower
becomes more and more fit, so does the higher enter more and more fully
into it, and abide in it; having influenced it towards maturity from above,
from a distance, so to say, until the entrance, even as the master guides
the construction of the house from without, until it is ready for his
occupation. Even so, only when the collection of the facts showing
evolutionary growth is completed by further facts of this and also of the
subtler worlds, relating to decay and death and [Page
5] rebirth, individual as
well as racial, then only can the true metaphysic descend into it and fulfil
its purpose.
4. NEED FOR CRITICISM
As
the recognition of one's deficiencies is the primary condition of the search
for the remedy, and divine discontent (vairãgya) is the only means
of finding the Divine, we might usefully dwell on those of the current
evolution theory.
The
old Creation theory, in India called the Ârambhavãda, made only one large assumption, of omnipresence, omnipotence and omniscience, which
could create everything out of nothing at one stroke. The new Evolution
theory (which, with completions, is called the Parinãma-vãda
in Samskrt literature) makes endless small assumptions at every step. What
the former did at one infinite stroke, this does by infinitesimal changes,
differentiations and integrations, formations and dissolutions, variations and
selections. The marvel is as great, the unintelligibility no less, to the thinker
who does not permit himself to mistake mere familiarity for intelligibility,
mere slowing down for complete rest, the infinitesimal for anything less
than the infinite. The need for final explanations becomes, if possible,
deeper than ever. Formerly it was the pastime of God, or His benevolence
and compassion, the wish to share His joy with other conscious beings,
[Page 6] or to have His glory seen and sung by such. Now, for the time being,
even this has been lost, and no other clearer purpose has risen in its place;
and the Force behind each step of the evolution is called the Unknowable.
Of course, even as
in the house that is being built, the builders, directly or indirectly but
inevitably, feel the guidance of the owner, even so the investigators of
evolution, the collectors of facts, the makers of lesser generalizations,
cannot help sensing the Something which is behind and around all evolution
and involution and perpetual re-volution; but they do so somewhat dimly,
and often even ignore the feeling, as not of any obvious use to the work
immediately in hand. This naturally leads to errors of omission and commission,
of interpreting facts wrongly, of emphasizing the smaller, unimportant and
subordinate ones, and minimizing the greater and more vital; even as ignorance
of the needs and purposes of the owner leads builders to leave things undone
or make excrescences in the house. And the errors are not
insignificant and negligible. They have vital consequences. A wrong
outlook upon life may make it all barren, pessimistic, quarrelsome,
fevered, desperate, instead of joyful, loving and fruitful. An
apparently small defect of sanitation, ventilation or drainage, may mean
the difference between disease and health, life and death, to the
occupant of the house.[Page 7]
5. SPENCER'S UNFRUITFUL RECOGNITION OF THE SPIRITUAL
PRINCIPLE AS THE UNKNOWABLE
Herbert
Spencer, whose collection of facts is the most comprehensive amongst the
Western workers, and who, therefore, was the readiest to receive the fulfilling
inspiration of the Spirit, postulates the Unknowable, at the very outset
of his encyclopaedic system of Synthetic Philosophy, in answer to the Final
Why, in place of the Eternal Reason (of the Joy of Self-assertion and Other-denial)
which will explain all. And in so far as he recognises and declares the
Presence of this Unknowable Absolute behind and through all the phenomena
of the Relative, he rises to his duty as a true scientist and philosopher.
But because his collection of facts is incomplete, because he could not
seriously take into account the facts of the superphysical worlds, because
he had not before him the complete history of any complete cycle, from
birth, through growth and reproduction and decay, to death, of any sun-system
or planet or race or sub-race, because he could not venture to push the
Law of Analogy far enough, therefore his recognition of the Unknowable,
the Absolute, the Anirvachanîya or Indescribable, as the Vedãntin
names It, remains vague, cloudy, meaningless and devoid of living use.
He just mentions it, once for all, so to say, and does not revert to it
again, whereas he should do so constantly, throughout the [Page 8] story of the Relative, if not to make the
latter really intelligible (for a mere Unknowable could scarcely do that), yet
at least to prevent the reader from forgetting that there was something left
for further research.
6. HOW THAT PRINCIPLE UNDERLIES ALL
EVOLUTIONARY AND
OTHER PROCESSES
As
it is, hasty readers, and not merely hasty readers but more industrious
delvers in the field of evolutionary investigation, have sometimes, in
the first flush of the finding of this great idea, rushed to the conclusion
that they had come to the bottom of the Universe, finally and completely
abolished all the old superstitions, and explained everything. They have
gone the way of the astronomer who declared with a sensational flourish: “I
have swept the heavens with my telescope and found no God†— a statement
perfectly true, by the way, for God indeed is not to be found by looking outwards,
with a telescope, at the surface of the visible heavens, but by looking inwards,
with concentrated and attentive mind, into the depths of one's own being,
which is then seen to be identical with All Being. God was verily hiding
within the wielder of the telescope and smiling while the hands were
sweeping the heavens with the instrument. So a physiologist spoke of the
brain secreting thought as the liver secretes bile, and [Page
9] others
accepted the teaching; till one, erstwhile a disciple and propagandist,
happened to study the works of some idealists, and discovered that while
the so-called producers, liver and brain, might have something in common,
the so-called products, bile and thought, had very little similarity with
each other; and that between objective phenomena and subjective phenomena,
between so many thousands or millions of vibrations at one end of a nerve
and a sound-sensation or a colour-sensation at the other end thereof, there
was a gulf which could not be bridged by lightly declaring the former to
be the cause of the latter. Later scientists have gone even further, and
declared that physical phenomena have to be explained by and reduced
into terms of the psychical, and not vice versa and thus have come
to the point where the influx of spiritual metaphysic can take place, completing,
re-arranging and making new for them the whole scheme of knowledge
and feeling and conduct, even as a stream of rays of light, converging in
a cone to the pin-hole in a pin-hole camera, reappears on the other side,
reversed and re-arranged, without losing any valuable and useful fact that
it possessed before. The scientific world is beginning to realise that while
the testimony on which all its knowledge of realities is based, is the testimony
of the five senses, these senses do not testify to their own reality; while
they prove the existence of other things, their own existence they cannot
prove. The [Page
10] eye sees all things; itself
it does not see. The ear hears all sounds; itself it does not hear. Their
existence is proved only by the Consciousness behind them. This Principle
of Consciousness sees the eye and hears the ear. As the sense-organs cognize,
so various emotion-organs feel, and action-organs act. But the Principle
of Consciousness behind cognizes the senses, feels the emotion-organs and
moves the muscles. It gives existence to, keeps going and at will puts to
sleep everything and all things, even as the audience, by attending or
otherwise, brings the playhouse into being, and keeps it going, or closes
it.
7. HOW THE EVOLUTIONIST MUST COME TO IT AT LAST
This
Principle the scientist has to come to, more and more closely. Shrî
Harsha, the William James, in brilliance, of the India of a thousand years
ago, and deeper-seeing than he in insight into causes, spoke of the Self-disbeliever
as the defaulter who, having successfully dodged the tax-collectors all night
through the devious lanes of the town, went to sleep in a dark porch towards
the morning, and woke up in the broad daylight to find that his shelter was
the threshold of the chief tax-assessor's office building, and that the collectors
were smiling benignly upon him.[Page 11]
Even
so the modern evolutionist, after having dodged more or less successfully
the upholders of special creation, through the winding pathways of infinite
and infinitely-changing environments, endless spontaneous variations and
survivals of the fittest, and incessant differentiations and integrations
and dissolutions and re-integrations — all
perfectly true, finds at the end, when he is feeling most self-satisfied,
that he has walked into the arms of an even more formidable, exacting and
ruthless account-keeper; that he has only come to the conclusion that the
infinite possibility of all possible forms isalreadypresent, from the beginningless beginning, in the primeval
biophore, the atomic speck of life — this same Infinite Potentiality,
plus all Actuality, being what the Vedãntin calls Brahman, which
is, and wherein is, “All, everywhere and alwaysâ€.
8. THE PRINCIPLE OF CONSCIOUSNESS IN DIFFERENT ASPECTS
Herbert Spencer himself
seems to have felt uncomfortable, and asked himself how all the richness
of later development in religion could arise from the primitive man's shadow,
through ancestral ghost and gods, if the shadow was really all shadow, a
pure falsehood. And he confesses (Principles of Sociology, Vol. Ill,
p. 170) that there must be some element of
truth in the primitive notions, and again, in the [Page
12] postscript to the last
edition of his First Principles, he states that no views or theories
of religion or metaphysic are either controverted or supported by his descriptions
of facts, and that these views and theories have to be worked out for
themselves by persons interested in such matters. He seems to have
realized that if nothing can come out of nothing in affairs material, surely
the same law should hold good in affairs psychical. The perception of the
shadow and the conception of the ghost — are these, or are these
not, the same ? If not — whence the difference ? The primitive
notion of the ghost, and the systems of theology and religion of today
are notidentical;
and if different, how has the difference been implanted ? Professor Lombroso's
investigations in spiritualism, and his conversion to a belief in the actual
existence of ghosts, will explain. Having, as he thought, disproved the
original Fiat, the (a) Primal Will, and (b) Imagination, and (c) Active
Being or Substance of God, the evolutionist, even otherwise than by psychical
research, has to accept all these again, no doubt with a more specific
meaning, under the names of (a) persistence of survival or instinct of
self-preservation, and (b) spontaneity of variation in (c) an endless activity
of struggle for self-maintenance and other-resistance amidst an infinity
of possible and actual forms and environments. God, who was invisible and
far-away, has appeared all around us, amongst us.[Page
13]
8 (a). IN BIOLOGY
The
evolutionary biologist set out with the determination to abolish the very
words vital force and
reduce into terms of the non-vital forces — as
if they were any better understood and were less mysterious — all the
manifestations that were ascribed by common ignorance and superstition
to that mysterious vital force. But after digging up whole mountains,
he is still as far from discovering the particular mouse he wanted as ever
before; though in the course of his labours he had incidentally made many
other most valuable finds, like the sons of Aesop's peasant who, dying,
told them to dig for hidden treasure in the ancestral field, and so ensured
a deep and thorough upturning of the soil and a rich harvest. Verily the
biologists' nucleus and protoplasm are the reflections of soul and body,
Spirit and Matter, and the living cell's powers of reproduction and
metabolism and contractile irritability are the same old discarded
Will and wise Imagination and Active Being, in more specific form. God,
who was distant, has come nearer, so near as to be immanent in every
cell of the living temple. As the Vedãntin says, the
mother, forgetting where she had put away her baby, went about
distracted, crying for it all over the town; and ultimately returning
home in despair, found it safely tucked away in her own bed.[Page
14]
8 (b). IN SOCIOLOGY
The
growth from the priest-king-patriarch, of the sociologists' ecclesiastico-professional,
politico-military, and domestico-industrial, or, more briefly, the educative,
regulative and sustentative factors of society, and the intellectual, militant,
and artist-craftsman, or brãhmana, kshattriya
and vaishya types of individuals — can be accounted for satisfactorily
only by the eternal presence in the Principle of Consciousness of the same
constituent elements of Imagination, Active Self-assertion, and Wilful
Expansion by means of substantial possessions.
8 (c). IN PHYSIOLOGY
So also, the physiologist's
nervous, glandulovascular and muscular systems (with their repeated triple
subdivisions), evolved, out of centrosome-chromatin-protoplasm or endoderm-hypoderm-ectoderm,
can be really explained only by reference to the same psychological triplet
of Imagination, etc., better called Cognition, Desire and Action, ever present
(in mutual solution and neutralization) in that Absolute Consciousness
which is made up of the Self, the Not-Self, and the Relation of Interplay,
between them, of the nature of Denial of one another.[Page 15]
8 (d). IN CHEMISTRY
The
chemist, too, having resolved the world of matter into atoms, valencies and
composition-properties, in order really to understand what these mean, must
translate them into terms of consciousness; the same old desiring and desirable
Self as substance, Its activity as affinity, and Its wisdom or imagination
as special sense-property, and these together as being the underlying significance
of the chemical triplet.
8 (e). IN PHYSICS
So
the physicist, having arrived with admirable industry at the general fact
and conception of Force, manifesting in many forms with many material
coefficients of these forms, finds that the thing Force is wholly unintelligible.
He gives it different names, he calls it energy, power, resistance, push,
pull, negative, positive, defines it in terms of weight and work and distance
and measure and number — but cannot really bring it home to himself,
until he sees it as Will, his own will, his own desire, with its branchings
in negative passion and positive action, and its many transformations
(Imaginations) in our psychical and physiological functionings, with the help
of the various Substances, material coefficients, physical bases, vehicles,
organs, receivers, foci, diffusers, which make up the living body we know
so well yet so little.[Page 16]
8 (f). IN MATHEMATICS
Even the mathematician,
that wielder of the most exact of sciences, must ultimately take refuge in
the airy nothings of metaphysic,
which, being airy, are, as the breath, far more incessantly necessary to our
life than solids or liquids. Who ever saw the geometrician's point that had
a position but no magnitude, or the line that was all length but no breadth,
or the sphere whose center was really and truly equidistant from all points
of the periphery ? These are all purely metaphysical conceptions. The only
such point that we know and feel and realize is our self-consciousness, our
Ego, which is here and now and yet cannot be measured, the only such line is
our memory-expectation, that stretches continuously before and after, the only
such sphere is our field of consciousness, our Kshetra, our rounded-out being,
wherein everything and all experiences exist always, and each point of
which is neither more nor less distant than any other from that
central Self which is the Kshetrajña, the owner and the knower
of that field, who moves over it from point to point, at will, in the shape
of Attention. The geometrician's definitions stand for Desire, his axioms for
Knowledge, his postulates for Action; and out of these three the whole of
his science is built. Even the arithmetician's one, his many,
his zero — are
all entirely unfixable in the concrete, for none [Page
17] ever saw a
one that had not many parts, and none ever held a zero in
his hands. These are all fixable only as metaphysical conceptions, corresponding
to the same Triad of consciousness, the one Subject, the manifold Object,
and the relation of Negation between them, viz., the unconsciousness
of sleep, in which the manifold merges into Nothing.
Thus
do we see that all paths of enquiry, if only resolutely pursued, bring
us to the selfsame goal — that metaphysical conceptions form the
very foundations of every science, and that when the house of matter is
ready, the Spirit unfailingly comes in to occupy it, the Spirit, the Master
of the house, who knows all its ins and outs, all its many departments,
co-ordinates and utilizes them all; though the mason, the carpenter, the
brick-maker, the glazier, the plumber, the electrician, the painter — each
knows about his own and no other.
But another illustration, an historical one, of this fact is that when material
science had made sufficient progress, there was an inrush of spiritualism
in the lower sense of ghost-phenomena as well as the higher
sense of spiritual philosophy, Theosophy and metaphysic. The same
facts of the life of matter out of which Herbert Spencer built up his
system of synthetic philosophy, with many gaps that require filling, and
many generalizations that are one-sided and require revision, and with
the why of everything unexplained—these same facts are
evolved by [Page 18] Madame H. P. Blavatsky in her works, written during the same
epoch as Spencer's, from spiritual data, the basic principles of the
Supreme Consciousness, in a manner which supplements to our
satisfaction the results of the evolutionists, fills up their gaps, revises and
rectifies their generalizations, explains anomalies, and helps us on towards
the reason why for all this toil and turmoil.
9. THE SCIENCE OF THIS PRINCIPLE OF
CONSCIOUSNESSOF
THE ABSOLUTE
For as there is a Science
of the Relative, so is there a Science of the Absolute, the so-called Unknowable,
the Principle of Consciousness. This latter science is discernible as ramifying
through, and indeed constituting, the very science-ness and rationality in
the former. It is metaphysic subjectively and mathematics objectively. The
element of uniform, law and order, and balancing up, and cyclic periodicity,
in the midst of unruly multitudinousness, is the subject-matter of this science.
In continually equilibrating up the Relative within Itself, the Absolute
manifests as the Omnipotent Will which upholds as well as circumscribes Omniscient
Imagination and Omnipresent Action, while It Itself finds possibility of
manifestation only through them, in turn. This Universal Consciousness
imposes by Force, by Might, by Energy, by Eternal Shakti, [Page
19] the
law of unity, of uniformity, of the Axioms, upon the riot and disorder
of the infinite material of the Definitions and the endless movement of
the Postulates; and, in the first proposition of Euclid, creates, by the
intersection of the two circles of Purusha and Prakrti, the equilateral
and equiangular Jîvã, with three equally important functions
of mind and three equally indispensable components of body. It imposes,
by the wisdom of the Rule of Three, the law of just ratio and proportion
on the ir-ratio-nal multiplications and divisions of the countless numbers
of the world-process.
10. THE LINK BETWEEN THE SCIENCES
OF THE RELATIVE
AND THE ABSOLUTE
To
bridge over the gap between the modern evolution theory and the old Brahma-vidyã and Âtma-vidyã,
or metaphysic and psychology, we have to consult the History of the World-Process,
as given in the Purãnas and in
Madame Blavatsky's The Secret Doctrine, for corrections and additions
to such modern collections of facts as are contained in Spencer's
monumental writings. These corrections and additions may be briefly noted
as below:
(a) While Spencer recognizes
and mentions the fact of Dissolution, as the complementary reaction of Evolution,
he does not bring out its full significance. It was pointed out by others,
in his lifetime, that his [Page
20]
statement of the instability
of the homogeneous required to be supplemented by a statement of the instability
of the heterogeneous. He replied that he had made the needed statement in
the form that the heterogeneous tended to become more heterogeneous. But
this only means that the element of homogeneitystill left in
the product after a course of hetero-genition, breaks up further. It is not
that complement and converse or opposite which is wanted, viz., that
as the homogeneous tends to become the heterogenous, so, per contra,
the heterogeneous tends to become homogeneous. There are opposing currents
in the stream of the World-process, because it is made up of the opposite Factors
of Spirit and Matter. This fact, of dust back unto dust, through living
body, Spencer has not clearly brought out. He seems to have stopped at
the half-truth — of
dust to living body, and did not fully realize the other half— living
body to dust again — in all its fullness, as applying to all systems of
planets and suns and stars, as well as organisms of microscopic
bacilli. Theosophical literature has endeavored to supply this lack, taking
wide views of astrogeny and geogeny, which Spencer could not deal with,
either in their physical or their superphysical aspects.
(6) The second fact
which the Puranãs and The Secret Doctrine supply is
that of Reproduction on all scales. The three main events in the life
of every [Page
21] organism are birth, marriage
and death. The evolutionists have dealt with birth and growth principally;
not with decay and death to the same extent, as said above; nor with marriage
and reproduction as fully, though these constitute the third outstanding feature
of life. The tendency to multiply by reproducing themselves is as inherent
in all beings as to be born and to die. Even as a tree is born from a tree,
an animal from an animal, a man from a man, even so is a god born from a god,
a kingdom from a kingdom, a race from a race, an idea from an idea, an epoch
from an epoch, a cycle from a cycle, an aeon from an aeon, a planet from a
planet, a sun from a sun, a star-system from a star-system, an atom from
an atom, a cell from a cell, a sound from a sound, a visible picture from
a visible form, and so on endlessly. Infinity surges everywhere.
By the recognition of these two further facts, in their full significance, the
work of the evolutionists is completed, so far as description is concerned,
and the course of the world-process is seen to run in an endless cyclical
spiral.
(c) The last addition
which ancient metaphysic endeavors to make to modern evolutionary science,
in terms suited to current needs, is the addition of the Why and Wherefore,
the Purpose and Meaning of evolution, reproduction and dissolution, the inner
explanation and reason of the appearance which we call the world-process.
It explains why (and also, in
[Page 22] a
re-arranged form, how) all this endless and ceaseless change and motion appears
within Eternal Changelessness and Rest; and makes the bewildering multitude
of physical and super-physical details intelligible as a synthetic and perfectly
co-ordinate unity, wherein there is an appropriate place for every department
of science, and every variety of religion, and all possible beliefs and ideas.
It tells us of the passionless Absolute which is the Source of the Psychic
Energy without the belief in which no religion can exist, and which is also
the locus of that Material Substance without the belief in which science
is impossible. It also shows us that belief in personal gods of higher and
higher grades is in perfect consistency with, nay, required by, strict science.
It helps us to realize that this Absolute is that very Principle of Consciousness
with which all individual consciousnesses are identical. It brings home to
us the fact that every atom contains the whole world at the same time that
it is contained in that world; that everything is everywhere and always,
because it is all of the very substance of consciousness, in eternal simultaneity,
while manifestation is in and by succession — as the biologist has
also discovered when he says that the primeval biophore contains, in the
shape of an infinite number of id-s, the seeds or potencies of all
forms of all species that develop subsequently in the course of ages. Finally,
it enables us to reconcile all possible differences by a judicious combination
of both the [Page
22] opposite
extremes that may be in seemingly hopeless conflict, by means of the great
fact that the two ultimate archetypes of opposites, Self and not-Self,
are present in eternal and inseparable combination in that selfsame Principle
of Consciousness.
11. UNIVERSAL CONSCIOUSNESS
AND ITS TWO ASPECTS,
PHYSICALAND PSYCHICAL
This Principle of Consciousness,
Universal Consciousness, pervades all, supports and maintains all, makes
possible all memory and mutual understanding and sympathy and help between
living individuals, and indeed all recognition by them of each other as individualconsciousnesses, which would otherwise be wholly impossible;
wills the perpetual to-and-fro swing of life and death, integration and
dissolution, inspiration and expiration, under laws which are parts of Its
Being, Its Nature, Its Sva-bhãva; imagines the endless forms which
illustrate that swing in atom and star-system; makes and breaks souls and
bodies, jîvas and koshas, cores and crusts; is ever present in, and
always, and in a see-saw fashion, assimilating and also differentiating, both
subjects and objects, knowers and known, desirers and desired; leaving
nothing inanimate, but only permitting illusive appearances of more
animate and less so. It is the Principle which bridges the chasm between the
psychical and the physical, for it holds together both in Its hands, [Page
24] imagines and creates both
by Its will. Because It identifies Itself with a form and a colour by Its
own will and imagination, therefore It becomes an eye which can see forms
and colours; because It identifies itself with a sound, It becomes an ear
and can hear sounds. There is no chasm between vibrations and sensation,
between physical and psychical, because both are presentat both
ends of the nerve.
The vibrations are the vibrations of a living substance, the sensation
is a sensation in substantialised or materialised Spirit. Because the Self
has identified Itself, by Its will and imagination, with a material body,
and not only with one but with all, in its universal aspect; therefore living
bodies, pieces of matter in which the psychical aspect is more prominent,
can cognise other bodies in which the material aspect is more prominent.
Only by regarding all forms as en-soul-ed and all souls as in-form-ed,
or em-bodi-ed, though in some the one aspect and in others the other is predominant,
may we fill up this chasm.
12. INDIVIDUAL CONSCIOUSNESS AS PRODUCT OF COGNITION
AND ACTION RUNNING IN AND OUT OF EACH OTHER
Even as the electric
spark is the result of the two kinds of electricity, positive and negative,
running into each other after separation, even so life, individualized life,
is the running into each other of the [Page
25] forces
or aspects belonging to the two halves of the principle of Consciousness,
Brahman, the two poles named Spirit and Matter, Self and not-Self. The
force belonging to the negative pole, or not-Self, may be said to correspond
with kãma-prãna, the lower personal passion and its allied
selfish intelligence; the other with Buddhi, the higher and impersonal passion
or compassion and unselfish reason. The running together of the two makes
the light of manifest life, or mentality. Thus we have the Self, or Âtma,
and Buddhi, or compassionate wisdom and higher or self-sacrificing desire,
on the one hand; and the Not-Self, or Body and Prãna, or passionate
vitality and lower or selfish desire on the other; and between them the
Manas. And even as the longer-circuited and the more complexly twisted
the incandescent wire, the richer the light; even so the more complex the
organization of the material sheath and the more numerous its
concatenated hormones and mutually stimulating secretions and
excretions, the richer the manifestation, in individual intelligence, of
the Principle of Consciousness.
Thus
then, we may see that it is this Principle which brings about the superimposition — adhyãsa — of
each other's qualities illusively, on subject and object, and so, bridging
over the gulf of opposition between them by the very act of creating them
both from within Itself, brings them into relation with each other, and
maintains the perpetual motion [Page
26] of this
infinite world-process. It pervades all; within. It all live and move and
have their being: It cannot be upheld by anything else than Itself.
But
we have to remember that it is not the individual consciousness that has
this supreme power of sustaining and regulating the world-process. The
dissatisfaction felt with such otherwise excellent expositions of Idealism
as that of Berkeley is due to this impression left by them that the individual
consciousness is the all in all (though that was not Berkeley's intention).
It is the Universal Consciousness, or if we like it better, the Universal
Principle of Consciousness — for it covers all those manifestations
also which are popularly called even unconsciousness, or
subconsciousness or supra-consciousness, waking, dreaming, slumbering,
etc. — which is that sustainer of the Universe, and which includes all
individual consciousnesses as identical with Itself, as so many infinite
points, foci, of Its manifestation.
13. THE NEXT STEP FOR MODERN PSYCHOLOGY
AND THE
SCIENCE OF THINKING
Modern psychology has
discovered that no mental phenomenon stands by itself wholly unconnected
with others. There is not even a single sensation which can be called a simple
state of consciousness. Every such apparently single and simple sensation
is also only a point, a factor, an element in and of the total [Page
27] complex consciousness of
the moment, of any given individual; its supposed singleness is only an appearance, i.e.,
an illusion, a mãyã, due to that individual directing his attention
to it, so making it the mostprominent feature of that complex
consciousness for the time. So also has modern psychology discovered, or
is discovering, that thought and emotion and volition can never be completely
dissociated. Each sensation is connected with a desire, each desire with
an impulse, a tendency to action. There is no emotion but has a more or less
distinct background of ideas; no idea but is tinged, however slightly, with
an emotion; neither of these, again, but is directly or indirectly associated
with a conation, however incipient. Modern psychology is thus discovering
the fact of the continuum of the individual consciousness.
But it has to make
a further advance. Even as a single sensation is only an inseparable and
organic part of a total of individual consciousness, even so is every so-called
total of individual consciousness an organic and inseparable part of the
Universal Consciousness. Even as nature, the object-world, is interlinked
in all its parts, even more so is the subject-world a breakless unity. The
chain of causation stretches unbroken, akhanda, from end to end of time;
all things are acting and reacting on all other things simultaneously in
boundless space; the whole contains the parts in actual and specific detail,
each part contains the whole in general potency; the tree [Page
28] contains
the seeds, each seed the tree; all sensations are being sensed, all desires
felt, all acts done, everywhere, always, by the All. But at any one point,
only one sensation, or one desire, or one act is more prominently attended
to by that point of consciousness. Further, when any such jîva-focus,
having, in accordance with the cyclic laws of its own particular being, imposed
on it by that Universal Being with which it is identical, come to its finest
point of personality and egoism, begins to disperse towards Impersonality,
this knowledge of its own unbroken continuity with all else arises within
it.
14. ITS COMPLETION AND CONVERSION
INTO ADVAITA
METAPHYSIC
When
modern psychology discovers this, it will become converted into metaphysic,
Advaita Vedãnta, the “non-dualistic or monistic crown of
knowledgeâ€, which sees that there is only One Consciousness without a
second, of which all apparently and illusively separate ones are so many
points of manifestation. This is how Nyãya and Vaisheshika,
corresponding, roughly, with logic-psychology and physics, merge into
Yoga and Sañkhya, superphysics and psycho-physics; and these into the
two Mîmãmsãs, the Unity of Action - and the Unity of Thought.
An Indian apologue
tells of a band of passengers who set out on a long, difficult and dangerous
journey, wandered off from each other, on different errands, [Page
29] and
met again after long years. Then to make sure that all was well, they counted
each other. But every counter counted all his companions but not himself,
and so none could obtain full tale. And there was much perplexity and sorrow,
till some one remembered, and counting himself also, corrected the oversight,
the primal error of Avidyã, “ forgetfulness of Selfâ€, and secured
full and assured tale of eternal deathlessness for all. By no counting of
details outside, no
heaping up of endless particulars of physical or superphysical worlds,
may that assurance be gained. Much interesting and instructive
work, no doubt, and valuable lessons and experiences, and
excellent and indeed indispensable occupation, may be gained. But
until man sees himself, his Self, the Self, the count is incomplete,
the final secret hidden, the why unknown, the bondage and the
slavery to things and forces outside unbroken, the oneness of all life and
all nature unrealized, that perfect same-sightedness unachieved which
sees the same Life-Principle manifesting everywhere, the same law
of the rhythmic swing of life and death, joy and sorrow, good and evil,
evolution and dissolution, working ceaselessly in all creatures, from
insect to Star-ruler, the Law which carries eternal assurance
of all experiences and equal justice to all souls.
Metaphysic is thus the necessary completion and unification of all
sciences, physical and superphysical. It explains the essential laws of all
the manifestations [Page 30] of the Universal Principle of Consciousness, in
infinite individual lives of combined spirit and matter, of whatever grade of
subtlety or density. It enables us to understand the why, as the sciences
tell us the how. [See The Science of Peace, and The Science
of the Sacred Word; or the Pranãva-Vãda of Gãrgyayana, by
Bhagavan Das]
15. PRACTICAL CONSEQUENCES
But what is the
practical bearing, the pragmatic consequence, as it is called now, of this
particular understanding ? Just this. The mere descriptions,
available in modern works, of the evolution of worlds, kingdoms, living
beings, the human race, its complex societies and institutions, no more
dispense with the study of this Science of the Self than a description of
edibles dispenses with the actual eating of them to maintain life. Science,
it is universally acknowledged, is useless if we cannot make it subserve
life. The knowledge of evolution is useless unless we know also its purpose.
Only when we know the purpose can we definitely and deliberately tread
our proper path in life, can we make the forces and materials available
help on that purpose. This knowledge of the why, of the Svabhãva
of Brahman, which includes and regulates the ends of the pursuant and then
the renunciant life, is the true spiritual knowledge, Parã-Vidyã;
all else, however glorious and far-reaching in detail, is material knowledge,
Aparã-Vidyã.